Fewer Ohio kids poor enough to qualify for free school lunches

Wednesday

Mar 1, 2017 at 5:30 AMMar 1, 2017 at 5:30 AM

Catherine Candisky The Columbus Dispatch @ccandisky

The percentage of Ohio students receiving free or subsidized school lunches dropped to 41 percent this year, a 2-percentage-point decline and the largest since the end of the Great Recession seven years ago.

That's the good news.

The bad news: More than 4 in 10 school-age kids are still living in poor households.

"We're heading in the right direction, but we are lagging where we were" before the recession, said Howard Fleeter, an education analyst.

The number of students qualifying for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program is widely considered a strong indicator of the level of poverty and the strength of Ohio's economy.

When the economic downturn hit in 2007, 36 percent of Ohio students qualified for the aid. That share climbed to 45 percent by 2011 and hadn't budged much until this school year, according to data schools provide to the Ohio Department of Education.

This school year, nearly 750,000 of Ohio's 1.8 million school kids are eligible for the lunch program. That's about 20,000 fewer students than last year, when 43 percent of students qualified.

"It looks like we're finally turning a corner," Fleeter said, pointing to the decline and other economic indicators.

Ohio's poverty rate dropped from a high of 16.4 percent in 2011 to 14.8 percent in 2015. During that same period, food-stamp enrollment fell from 15.5 percent to 14.3 percent .

Free lunches — and breakfasts where offered — are available to children in families with annual incomes less than 130 percent of the federal poverty level, or below $26,546 a year for a family of three. Reduced-price meals are available to students with household incomes up to 185 percent of poverty — $37,777 a year for a family of three.

Earnings of 200 percent of the federal poverty rate are widely considered to be necessary for families to be self-sufficient.

The statewide number of free and subsidized lunches is inflated somewhat because once the percentage passes a certain threshold within a school, the entire school is deemed elgible for the aid, even though some children may come from families that don't otherwise qualify. For example, the entire Columbus school district offers free and lower-priced lunches.

Those working closely with the poor cautioned that despite the positive signs, much work remains.

"We still have 4 out of 10 children who qualify for help," said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks. "Modest progress is good, but when we talk to schools, demand for (weekend food) backpacks and on-site pantries is going up."

Hamler-Fugitt noted that Ohio still has the sixth highest food-insecurity rate in the country, with 16.1 percent of residents experiencing hunger.

Kids who are poor and hungry face many challenges. When families are struggling to pay the bills, it creates stress for parents and their children, and kids who are hungry are more likely to experience developmental impairments, cognitive deficiencies and a variety of illnesses. For those reasons and others, poor students typically start kindergarten behind students from higher-income households and tend to lose more ground during summer break. Most continue to lag into higher grades.

"While a decrease in the number of children receiving free or reduced lunches reflects improvement in overall family incomes, we need to be cautiously optimistic about the gains," said Erica Sevilla, spokeswoman for the Children's Hunger Alliance.

"There are still families living paycheck to paycheck that may not be able to make ends meet and provide sufficient food for their children. It only takes a single incident to put a family making just over 185 percent of the poverty line at risk of being unable to provide enough for their children to eat. Consider an unexpected illness, a high gas bill in the winter, a necessary car repair or job loss."